


Day 1: Base Character

by EllaEnchanting



Series: Hypnovember 2019 [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Amnesia, Brainwashing, Consensual Non-Consent, Dom/sub, F/F, Hypnotism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:14:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25429003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllaEnchanting/pseuds/EllaEnchanting
Summary: ”Or maybe it was the ship of Theseus- Janine seeing how many little pieces of her she could replace until she fundamentally just wasn’t the same person anymore."
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Series: Hypnovember 2019 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1841872
Comments: 4
Kudos: 40





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The [ Ship of Theseus ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus) is a philosophical thought experiment- how many pieces of a ship can you replace before it's fundamentally not the same ship anymore? 
> 
> For some reason, it struck me as a very sexy concept to think about in relation to brainwashing.

Her favorite color was red. She was sure of it.

Well, as sure as she could be of anything now.

The thought felt steady and certain as she mentally poked at it. It was something she didn’t need to doubt. Something unquestionable.

So unquestionable that it made her suspicious.

There were some things about herself that she knew were the same as they had been pre-Janine. She had worked in the same job for 5 years- she had the emails to prove that. She knew what university she had graduated from- the diploma was framed and sitting in her office. She was pretty sure she had always been close with her family- she had the pictures and Facebook messages and phone calls and, besides, Janine probably wouldn’t mess with something like that.

Probably.

She was also definitely allowed to remember that some things about her had changed. There was a little gesture she made whenever she introduced herself to a new person now- a circle with her fingers. She usually subtly made it with her left hand while she shook the new person’s hand with her right. The ring gesture took the place of a collar for her when she couldn’t wear a real one. It reminded her that she was owned.

She was allowed to remember that she had not always had such a strong reaction to the word “please”. There was a time long ago when “please” was not nearly as evocative to her- when it didn’t bring up thoughts about the importance of needing and the importance of being pleasing. When they didn't cement her certainty of how necessary it was for her to please. Often when someone said “please” she got vivid mental flashes of being on her knees and pleasing Janine’s cunt over and over again.

Janine had allowed her to clearly remember some of the hypnosis sessions and brainwashing that made these reactions feel normal and instinctual now. She remembered what it had felt like to gradually succumb to her programming. She still thought of it when she touched herself sometimes.

She wasn’t sure if that last part was a hidden command or not. (Which, of course, made the touching feel even hotter.)

It wasn’t the kind of sexy mind control you read about in stories- ones where someone is convinced they had always been a bimbo or a pet or a slave. Instead, Janine liked to change little things about her. For example, she occasionally changed her favorite band. Janine had made her like spicier food. She found herself easily enjoying all the TV shows Janine liked. She knew all of these preferences were the result of Janine's deliberate programming.

She knew, though, that these changes were also just the tip of the iceberg- a small revealed part indicating the existence of a large and submerged whole. Janine had been hypnotizing and programming her for years at this point. She had absolutely no recollection about most of what had happened to her during their sessions. Even the obvious behavioral conditioning that she knew must have occurred to lead to some changes just…slipped away from her. When Janine said something was normal she knew it was normal and when Janine told her not to notice something she didn’t even notice that she couldn’t notice it. Occasionally Janine would give her moments when she could remember different aspects of her programming (because, let’s face it, the reveal was really sexy for both of them) but afterwards she could remember there was a reveal and how it felt but absolutely no details. She could never even be sure if the memories of having a reveal were real or just suggested.

She suspected Janine was also behind her habit of mentally turning over aspects of herself and asking- did I _always_ believe this? Did I _always_ think this way? Was this always who I was?

Maybe Janine wanted her uncertain.

It was impossible to know.

It was kind of like being a Jenga set- feeling pieces taken and replaced and being restructured while still staying essentially the same.

Or maybe it was being the ship of Theseus- Janine seeing how many little pieces of her she could replace until she fundamentally just...wasn’t the same person anymore. 

She felt like, long ago, she and Janine had discussed and agreed upon some kind of end goal for her brainwashing. Even so, she couldn’t really remember that discussion or what exactly they had decided. She knew for sure, though, that she deeply enjoyed being so extremely brainwashed now. It was sexy and hot and also tender- a knowledge that someone wanted her enough to possess and control her in this way. She knew she wanted it. She knew that she needed it. She knew she craved more and more of it.

She knew all of this innately. The exact same way she knew that her favorite color was definitely red.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Someone asked me some follow up questions about how the brainwashing happened in the original Base Character story. I like the original story ambiguous. Consider this a non-canon sequel- one of several possibilities.

If she was going to totally honest with you, Janine didn’t know exactly _how_ she did what she did either. She was a skilled hypnotist, sure, but she had still been somewhat inexperienced when she met her girlfriend. She had certainly never brainwashed anyone before. If you had asked her at the time they met, she would have probably even told you that brainwashing wasn’t real.

But when she and Bre started dating, their connection was electric. It was like they had known each other their whole lives, like they were two parts of a same whole. Kink was part of their relationship pretty immediately. Janine was identifying as a switch at the time but she fell naturally into the dominant role with Bre. Bre had told her she could be a difficult subject and Janine was intimidated by this at first but- honestly, Janine had found Bre the softest of touches. Something about their relationship must have helped them both fall more easily into their roles as hypnotist and subject. Janine sometimes started to feel like she really _did_ have magical powers- that anything she suggested in trance would be easily believed and accepted by Bre. So did Bre.

It was incredibly hot. Neither of them had experienced anything like it before.

Janine had been nervous about Bre’s brainwashing obsession, though. While Janine had developed some interest in it in response to Bre’s excited rambling on the subject, brainwashing had never been a primary kinky interest of hers. Bre also apparently had an _extreme_ brainwashing fantasy- she wanted to be unmade and recreated in whatever image Janine wished for her to fit. She wanted no control over what happened to her or who she became.

That made Janine nervous. What Bre wanted was a _lot_ of responsibility on her. Janine didn’t even want kids- there was no way she wanted to remake an entire person (even if that _was_ possible, which she also wasn’t sure about). Plus, she loved Bre the way she was. Why would she want to totally change someone who she cared for so much?

Over time as the relationship deepened, though, Bre had managed to infect Janine with some of her brainwashing interest. Janine thought the idea of giving Bre a psychological collar, for example, had been pretty clever if she did say so herself. She was certainly unopposed to heightening Bre’s sex drive and her submissiveness in certain situations. And Janine had fun reading up on conditioning and programming Bre in little small ways- changing her favorite TV program to Janine’s favorite, for example. It wasn’t harmful and it didn’t fundamentally change the Bre that Janine loved.

One thing they had both worked on together was amnesia. That was a mutual strong interest in making Bre forget things at the beginning of their relationship. They had researched and practiced various techniques until eventually Bre could forget almost anything on command, at least for a short while. Once that was mastered, their play had become much more creative in general.

Janine was talking with some other hypnotists at a convention about amnesia one day when another hypnotist mentioned an interesting idea. His boyfriend had struggled with amnesia for a while. They were getting some partial successes but not quite what they were looking for. That all changed, though, when he had started being a bit more ambiguous. Instead of making it clear what his boyfriend was supposed to forget and trying lots of different techniques, he had worked on making the hypnosis sessions themselves feel fuzzy and distant and hinting to his boyfriend that he had perhaps forgotten more than he had realized. The hypnotist mixed in partial successes with these broader suggestions that his boyfriend was forgetting or misremembering even more things than he was aware of. He also cleverly tied in his boyfriend’s natural forgetfulness in certain areas (like his inability to remember their car plate number). His boyfriend may had realized that some of what he was being told wasn’t entirely true- they had negotiated for this after all- but nonetheless his confidence in his ability grew and grew until actual amnesia became much easier for him.

This gave Janine an idea. She had been thinking about her brainwashing dilemma all wrong. She didn’t need to actually recreate Bre from the ground up. Not only was that potentially impossible, it’s not what Janine wanted. And, she suspected, even as interested in brainwashing as she became, it wasn’t something she would ever want. What was really important, she thought, was that Bre _believed_ that she may have been taken apart and reconstructed. That way, she would be able to live out her fantasy and Janine would get to keep her wonderful girlfriend mostly the way she was.

Once Janine had this breakthrough, the actual process of creating this reality for Bre wasn’t difficult at all. Bre had become so good at amnesia that she could forget and remember and falsely remember almost anything on command. Janine continued conditioning some small shifts of interest in Bre- some that she would allow Bre to remember and some she purposefully wouldn’t. But, more importantly, she began to broadly hint that Bre had already shifted in more fundamental ways. She also took time every trance to emphasize to Bre’s hypnotized mind about how important and hot it was that Bre’s conscious self could never quite know how much she had been brainwashed. She could think about and enjoy the possibility that she had already been destroyed and recreated by Janine, maybe even several times. Janine encouraged that she could always be uncertain about how deeply she had been conditioned and that any certainty she felt could trigger a suspicious feeling that she was misremembering. Under this, Janine had also put a little lockbox in Bre’s mind that held all of the accurate information about what had and hadn’t actually happened- to be opened in cases of emergencies.

Bre had taken to these suggestions like a fish to water. Occasionally she would look over at Janine in awe and Janine would know exactly what she was thinking about. "You're so mindfucked," Janine would lean over and whisper in her ear, placing the endearment there gently like a kiss.

Bre’s favorite color really had always been red. Janine _had_ thought of changing it to green (which was Janine’s favorite color) but- then again, she had sentimental attachment to red. (Bre had been wearing a cute red top when they first met and that was what initially had caught Janine's attention.) Janine ultimately didn’t want to change that much about Bre. It was fun to do, but she appreciated their differences. She truly loved Bre exactly as she was. 

But Bre didn’t need to know that. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, feedback and comments are most appreciated.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Hypnovember 2019. I'll be posting a story a day from this challenge. As always, comments and feedback are welcomed and cherished!


End file.
